Hitting closer to home
Jan. 17th, 2012 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularToday was supposed to be a general strike. The entire city was supposed to be shut down.
Given that one of the few marches I saw had fewer than two hundred people, blocking only a single lane of the multi-lane one-way boulevard that is Panepistimiou Street, I suspect enthusiasm may not be what the organizers had hoped for.
I might have laughed it off, even, except for the one building that the vandals chose to hit.
My office building.
I'm not sure whether it was a brick, or a pole, or what they used, but in front of the building, a Mercedes had all its windows smashed out, and the ticket office next door for the Megaro Mousikis (the city opera hall and music center) had its windows smashed out...
... and one of the glass doors to the office building, the one I walk into every working day, the one I'd walked into only a few hours before, was smashed into the little tempered-glass pebbles you find when safety glass gets hit too hard.
If I'm asked which side I'm on in the dispute, arguments of philosophy can go on for hours, about how the government is making a huge mess even worse, about how so many people are gaming the system - effectively stripping the country to the bone - but sometimes the question becomes a lot simpler.
Which side puts you in fear for your safety, in fear for your life?
In New York, it's not the Occupiers.
In Athens, it's not the cops.
Given that one of the few marches I saw had fewer than two hundred people, blocking only a single lane of the multi-lane one-way boulevard that is Panepistimiou Street, I suspect enthusiasm may not be what the organizers had hoped for.
I might have laughed it off, even, except for the one building that the vandals chose to hit.
My office building.
I'm not sure whether it was a brick, or a pole, or what they used, but in front of the building, a Mercedes had all its windows smashed out, and the ticket office next door for the Megaro Mousikis (the city opera hall and music center) had its windows smashed out...
... and one of the glass doors to the office building, the one I walk into every working day, the one I'd walked into only a few hours before, was smashed into the little tempered-glass pebbles you find when safety glass gets hit too hard.
If I'm asked which side I'm on in the dispute, arguments of philosophy can go on for hours, about how the government is making a huge mess even worse, about how so many people are gaming the system - effectively stripping the country to the bone - but sometimes the question becomes a lot simpler.
Which side puts you in fear for your safety, in fear for your life?
In New York, it's not the Occupiers.
In Athens, it's not the cops.
